Posts Tagged ‘vmware tools’

While working on an article on complex VSA’s (i.e. a virtual storage appliance with PCIe pass-through SAS controllers) an old issue came back up again: NexentaStor virtual machines still have a problem installing VMware Tools since it branched from Open Solaris and began using Illumos. While this isn’t totally Nexenta’s fault – there is no “Nexenta” OS type in VMware to choose from – it would be nice if a dummy package was present to allow a smooth installation of VMware Tools; this is even the case with the latest NexentaStor release: 3.1.2.

VMware Tools bombs-out at SUNWuiu8 package failure. Illumos-based NexentaStor has no such package.

Instead, we need to modify the vmware-config-tools.pl script directly to compensate for the loss of the SUNWuiu8 package that is explicitly required in the installation script.

Commenting out the SUNWuiu8 related section allows the tools to install with no harm to the system or functionality.

Note the full “if” stanza for where the VMware Tools installer checks for ‘tools-for-solaris’ must be commented out. Since the SUNWuiu8 package does not exist – and more importantly is not needed for Illumos/Nexenta – removing a reference to it is a good thing. Now the installation can proceed as normal.

After the changes, installation completes as normal.

That’s all there is to getting the “Oracle Solaris” version of VMware Tools to work in newer NexentaStor virtual machines – now back to really fast VSA’s with JBOD-attached storage…

SOLORI’s Note: There is currently a long-standing bug that affects NexentaStor 3.1.x running as a virtual machine. Currently there is no known workaround to keep NexentaStor from running up a 50% cpu utilization from ESXi’s perspective. Inside the NexentaStor VM we see very little CPU utilization, but from the performance tab, we see 50% utilization on every configured vCPU allocated to the VM. Nexenta is reportedly looking into the cause of the problem.

I looked through this and there is nothing that stands out other that a huge number of interrupts while idle. I am not sure where those interrupts are coming from. I see something occasionally called volume-check and nmdtrace which could be causing the interrupts.

Right on the heels of vSphere 4 Update 2, a flurry of twitter and blog postings suggestion caution if upgrading a VMware View 4.x environment. Now, VMware has updated its KB to include a workaround for those needing to move to Update 2 for the feature and hardware support benefits but can’t afford to break their PCoIP-based View environment: in short, it’s all VMware Tools fault! Seems the SVGA drive in VMware Tools for Update 2 has a problem with PCoIP – preventing desktops from connecting.

Now VMware Tools has been installed and you’re ready to add more virtual disks and build ZFS storage pools. If you get a warning about HGFS not loading properly at boot time:

HGFS module mismatch warning.

it is not usually a big deal, but the VMware Host-Guest File System (HGFS) has been known to cause issues in some installations. SInce the NexentaStor appliance is not a general purpose operating system, you should customize the install to not use HGFS at all. To disable it, perform the following:

Edit “/kernel/drv/vmhgfs.conf”

Change: ﻿ name=”vmhgfs” parent=”pseudo” instance=0;

To: #name=”vmhgfs” parent=”pseudo” instance=0;

Re-boot the VSA

Upon reboot, there will be no complaint about the offending HGFS module. Remember that, after updating VMware Tools at a future date, the HGFS configuration file will need to be adjusted again. By the way, this process works just as well on the NexentaStor Commercial edition, however you might want to check with technical support prior to making such changes to a licensed/supported deployment.

Popular Posts

In Medio Stat Veritas

SOLORI's Take and Quick Take posts express my personal opinion unless explicitly attributed to other sources. Where possible, supporting facts are presented to properly frame and ground these opinions, however they are presented "AS-IS" without regard to warranty or promise: expressed or implied.

Comments are open to all registered users and may be edited for decorum. Spam is deleted with prejudice.